19 April, 2013

Attracting a real audience for learners through e-publishing

This session is about the benefits of attracting a real audience for
your learners through the use of e-publishing tools. I will define e-publishing
in a language learning setting and we will brainstorm and discuss benefits such
as motivation, more attention to accuracy, ownership and the importance of
purpose on the part of the students, among others. We will also try to identify drawbacks and
ways to minimize them and address the issue of reciprocity (the importance of
becoming a real audience for other learners as well).

Examples of a variety of free e-publishing tools appealing to teachers
with or without experience in the integration of technology will be presented. The
tools will be shown through samples of actual students’ projects. Some of the
tools to be shown are: Bookr, Issuu, Calameo, My Ebook, Brainshark, Storybird, wikis
and blogs.

We will also look at some tools and strategies for spreading the word
about your students’ work as well as for finding interesting projects for which
your students can be a real audience.

We will finally work on the relationship between these benefits, the
tools and pedagogically sound practices in the classroom to allow teachers to
make effective choices regarding e-publishing in their unique contexts.